I’ve written before about Montreal’s weirdly liminal status vis-à-vis its own alleged Europeanness.  (Wow, so many words in that last sentence that Firefox’s built-in spellchecker does not recognize.  But the OED has my back, so I persist.)  You know: Americans find it charmingly European, Europeans find it disappointingly North American, and the Québécois themselves bristle at the insinuation that it could even be placed in the same category as other anglophone metropolicalities.

That said, while I was taking my afternoon constitutional yesterday around six-ish miles of neighborhood pavement, I heard the unmistakeable sound of the vuvuzela drifting out of many open windows.  It’s probably safe to say that people here are more into the World Cup than they are in most other major North American cities, which of course means that we’re nearly, but not entirely, at the bottom of the list of countries in the world suffering the most from World Cup Fever.  I do like to pretend, however, that all of the enthusiasm is really over the Quidditch World Cup.  (Hey, leave my rich fantasy life alone!)

Very tangentially related to alleged Europeanness: zippy little cars with manual transmissions, one of which — an early ’90s Volkswagen hatchback — is parked in the narrow alley behind our apartment during the day.  All is well until the owner has to back it out of the alley in the evening, and… oh, man.  It sounds, and Pete can corroborate my utter lack of hyperbole, as though the owner is attempting to drive a stick shift without any use of the clutch whatsoever.  It creates this unbelievably prolonged, exaggeratedly horrific clangy whirring cacophony that I thought simply could not exist outside the realm of cheap movie and TV comedy.  Even the cats, who usually can’t be bothered to investigate anything taking place outside unless it has wings and sounds like a bird, leap up on the windowsill to try and figure out what the hell is going on, their ears swiveling wildly with each new metal-on-metal crash of gears.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to capture the marvel of the seemingly clutch-less stick shift with Pete’s camera one of these days.  Optimally on the day that the transmission explodes spectacularly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 8:52 am and is filed under bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.